darkSpyro

As Wave 2 hits TRU earlier today, no Nightfall was present due to her recall.
So, my fellow Portal Masters, when do you think she'll finally be rereleased, ready to purchase and in our glorious hands?
Sorry, , but I was so anxious to play her after seeing her preview video.

Probably in the infamous Wave 2.5 (the Holiday releases). Activision already said that Nightfall will be released until the end of the year, and this date makes sense for me.

Quote: Insane01

As Wave 2 hits TRU earlier today, no Nightfall was present due to her recall.
So, my fellow Portal Masters, when do you think she'll finally be rereleased, ready to purchase and in our glorious hands?
Sorry, , but I was so anxious to play her after seeing her preview video.

If you' re updated your game (a patch) Nightfall should work. Or so I've heard.

Wave 3, which comes out December 1

Quote: High_Volt23

Wave 3, which comes out December 1

Proof?

Quote: High_Volt23

Wave 3, which comes out December 1

yall got proof?

Given the PS3 never got the 1.2.1 patch whereas say the PS4 did, I wonder if he/she works on the PS3. I know a few folks got Nightfall but have not heard. Hope this does not become a Yawn trap

its such a shame that a character will be released so late when her vehicle was one of the first released......

Quote: DGAFPolar

its such a shame that a character will be released so late when her vehicle was one of the first released......

It is unfortunate, but it was probably a good thing she wasn't released in wave 1 if this recall was meant to happen. Imagine all of the sad kids and angry parents this might have created if it launched with the game. Fortunately only a set number of people got a hold of her, and was able to figure out that she doesn't work.

Anyone in the states who got her shouldn't have. So it's not like there should mass hysteria.

The figures will more then likely get "fixed" in house so Wii users can actually use her.

Based on the fact that the Wave 2 cases were clearly repacked with more High Volt and Smash Hit in place of the Nightfalls it is clear the patch is not their final solution. The cases I saw today looked like the four extra figures had been hastily inserted ( a few had bent cards from being put in the box crooked, we saw them opened like that). I have a feeling the patch was to enable the internal code in the current figures for people that bought them and will depend on support to handle the people that cannot patch. Then the figures that come out prior to the end of the year will have the correct internal code that will work with all systems out of the box. If you have a patched system, it will just recognize both internal codes as Nightfall.

The only question is how they are shipped. Activision might be ordering up a new run of them (cheaper than just destroying the bad ones) and they will ship in cases of just them. But, they may just make some room in Wave 3 boxes. Probably not since there are already four new ones in Wave 3. Who knows. One of the frustrating things about collecting Skylanders is the lack of communication from Activision. Half the time we have no idea figures are showing up until at best a couple days prior, if not when they show up on shelves. Amiibos may suck to find, but you know exactly the day they are coming out a month in advance - there is little mystery. Infinity you know the exact day and can almost always pre-order.

Not sure if this is accurate or not but I had recently preordered Nightfall on amazon.it, since it was the only amazon site that displayed her for preorder (it still might as I haven't checked recently). Anyways, had received an email a few days ago saying that the Nightfall I preordered won't be available or shipped until the 3rd of February 2016. Not sure what this means for us here in the US or elsewhere, but Italy may not have them until next year. I do hope this isn't the case for the US, but I suppose at this point that only time will tell.

It is kind of funny that Skylanders have been out the longest and they are the only Toys to Life franchise that doesn't have release dates. Amiibos, Disney Infinity, and now Lego Dimensions all have release dates. Activision has the ability to set hard release dates, but for some reason chooses not to. I cannot say definitively that this has hurt them or will hurt them in the future. However, it is my personal belief that it has and will. Having release dates is not even a little bit hard in today's world, so I am not sure why they have not decided to use them. With release dates, consumers can plan ahead and make informed purchasing decisions.

Quote: griswoldthunder

It is kind of funny that Skylanders have been out the longest and they are the only Toys to Life franchise that doesn't have release dates. Amiibos, Disney Infinity, and now Lego Dimensions all have release dates. Activision has the ability to set hard release dates, but for some reason chooses not to. I cannot say definitively that this has hurt them or will hurt them in the future. However, it is my personal belief that it has and will. Having release dates is not even a little bit hard in today's world, so I am not sure why they have not decided to use them. With release dates, consumers can plan ahead and make informed purchasing decisions.

This so much. There is no reason they cannot set dates on the figure releases, and as a result give the ability to pre-order at some stores. Everyone else can do it. It's either laziness or their thinking that the mystery drives sales. But, it is just annoying that I have to check stores over and over when they start popping up. Every single Amiibo and Infinity figure has a release date known well in advance, and they are always register locked for that date. Infinity even tells people when exclusive deals will expire and the figures go general release. Lego, the new guy to the block has given dates for everything all the way into next year.

Activision likes to tell us how they are the first and the biggest "Toys to Life", but after five games they still release figures like they are the rookie franchise still figuring this stuff out. They don't even give us an idea of what is in the Waves, we have to cobble that stuff together from retailer listings in various regions. I love the games, but really?

Quote: lamoracke

Given the PS3 never got the 1.2.1 patch whereas say the PS4 did, I wonder if he/she works on the PS3. I know a few folks got Nightfall but have not heard. Hope this does not become a Yawn trap

As of now, it seems PS4 is the only platform that has received the patch. Strange.

Some regions of WiiU and X360 as well, I've heard.

Maybe someone went on already sending patches to fix Nightfall but didn't know she was getting recalled to begin with?

Quote: TakeYourLemons

Quote: lamoracke

Given the PS3 never got the 1.2.1 patch whereas say the PS4 did, I wonder if he/she works on the PS3. I know a few folks got Nightfall but have not heard. Hope this does not become a Yawn trap

As of now, it seems PS4 is the only platform that has received the patch. Strange.

Microsoft's patch approval and validation process is a great deal more rigorous as I understand. Sony will pretty much just lightly test it and let 'er rip. Updates almost always hit PS4 first, and I doubt Microsoft classifies this as "emergency".

Quote: defpally

Quote: TakeYourLemons

Quote: lamoracke

Given the PS3 never got the 1.2.1 patch whereas say the PS4 did, I wonder if he/she works on the PS3. I know a few folks got Nightfall but have not heard. Hope this does not become a Yawn trap

As of now, it seems PS4 is the only platform that has received the patch. Strange.

Microsoft's patch approval and validation process is a great deal more rigorous as I understand. Sony will pretty much just lightly test it and let 'er rip. Updates almost always hit PS4 first, and I doubt Microsoft classifies this as "emergency".

I'm really confused as to why they would recall a figure AND do the patch. If they're simply going to support two RFID character ids for Nightfall we all know how problematic that will be for future games. I had no idea Microsoft knew more than the developer as to what constitutes an emergency. I believe the developer has to pay a sizable sum to them to get the patch out there anyway. Maybe they're trying to stack all fixes together to save money.

Microsoft thinks it does, yeah. Heard a LOT from Skullgirls' dev team about simple things like a patch to fix game breaking bugs will take several weeks over Steam and Playstation because they take their time no matter how dire.

Quote: TakeYourLemons

I'm really confused as to why they would recall a figure AND do the patch. If they're simply going to support two RFID character ids for Nightfall we all know how problematic that will be for future games. I had no idea Microsoft knew more than the developer as to what constitutes an emergency. I believe the developer has to pay a sizable sum to them to get the patch out there anyway. Maybe they're trying to stack all fixes together to save money.

The problem is they have two issues:

1. People with nightfall with a "bad" unique ID chip "in the wild".
2. Games (some that cannot be patched) that only recognize the "good" unique ID chip.

Patch fixes #1, except for people affected by #2. This is a kids game, and many parent's don't know about patching and don't connect their system to the Internet (for family reasons in additions to security). The last thing they want is widespread "why does it not work on Christmas Day and disappointed kids). Early adopters that did get it are likely a bit more aware and can be handled on a case by case basis, talking them through updates or sending replacement disks with the patch included.

It's not unlike what I've dealt with when bad code goes out. Stop what you can and fix the release, but offer a patch to those that have deployed and cannot easily back it out or roll out a full release. You eat crow and give a quick band-aid, then send the real fix out after proper testing. Above all, you give constant communication and honest answers (this is where Activision hasn't really done all that well - I would have expected an announcement and apology on the Facebook page with a link to the resolution plan). You can save so much goodwill through honesty and giving the option of how to proceed to the affected parties without them having to hunt it down. I'm surprised something like this hasn't happened yet, but I'm even more surprised they didn't have a final regression test where someone loaded one of each finished figure into each game to confirm. When you have a big team with a lot of complex code areas, things can slip through.

Quote: Bifrost

Microsoft thinks it does, yeah. Heard a LOT from Skullgirls' dev team about simple things like a patch to fix game breaking bugs will take several weeks over Steam and Playstation because they take their time no matter how dire.

Microsoft is old hat at shipping updates, I'd be more willing to trust their judgement on this. They once upon a time were more lenient on the XBox, which resulted in games shipping patches that were more broken than the previous one (Fez, for example). Now their process seems to be more tightly controlled.

I'm really surprised too that someone didn't take 10 minutes and go through the factory figs with the final release and regression test. I guess you're right they're hitting different things. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for those conversations. I have to think several people may have lost jobs over this due to the cost alone to fix this.

There's a balance to strike here...not sure why Microsoft cares really if bad developers deliver bad code, but apparently it was bad enough in the past that it threatened their eco system. Not sure if it speaks to issues in their SDK or not. Everyone knows Directx version 12 will fix all of the FPS issues.

Tightly controlled doesn't mean that they can hold a patch for over two weeks,sometimes more, then find out there's this teensy tiny bit sizing/naming issue, then have to be sent the patch again for ANOTHER two weeks,sometimes more. I don't think it's as slow for X1,but on Xbox 360,it was bad.

Quote: TakeYourLemons

I'm really surprised too that someone didn't take 10 minutes and go through the factory figs with the final release and regression test. I guess you're right they're hitting different things. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for those conversations. I have to think several people may have lost jobs over this due to the cost alone to fix this.

There's a balance to strike here...not sure why Microsoft cares really if bad developers deliver bad code, but apparently it was bad enough in the past that it threatened their eco system. Not sure if it speaks to issues in their SDK or not. Everyone knows Directx version 12 will fix all of the FPS issues.

Bad code reflects on them as well. People will sometimes think it is due to the console. I'm a big fan of a methodical and controlled release process, so you aren't going to find a fan of Sony's "quick and dirty" process in me. We had a client once that used to demand releases "thrown over the wall" so they could "simultaneously test". It took years of coaching them to show them how much extra work it was causing them, and contributing towards their frustration with us. We had to do a multi year issue review process to identify root cause when they accused us of being a "poor vendor". Turns out like 98% of the problems were caused by their testers insisting on frequent untested releases and other "can you throw this in and give me a new release" requests, not to mention their self inflicted wounds.

Look at it like this: Sony has at least three times in my memory released system updates that could brick your system hardcore. We aren't talking about beta testing that Xbox offers some volunteers. These are production ready, pushed to all system updates.

Why was Nightfall recalled in the first place?

Quote: Gentleman Brawl

Why was Nightfall recalled in the first place?

Simple she was found defective as the chips within her could not be read so no one who has her is able to play as her. There was a patch made for most users who have her so they can use their defective Nightfalls, but recalled the rest so that they can guarantee perfectly working ones for the future and others who don't have her.

Wave 2 is currently dated for Monday, 26th October in Australia, according to EB Games, and can be preordered:

https://www.ebgames.com.au/ps3...r-PlayStation-3

Understandably, Nightfall is not listed at all.

Well it looks like Nightfall is gonna be the Holy Grail of Superchargers.

To my knowledge no other Skylanders have been recalled before.

Series 1 Bash,Ghost Roaster and the Expansion Packs still take that place. Nightfall still had a minimal release now,and will probably get enough stock to compensate by the end of the year.

My TRU still has pegs full of the SSA adventure packs

Will Nightfall be the Wham-Shell, Ninjini, Doom Stone, Yawn Traps of SSC? I hope not. I hope it's Thrillipede as I don't care too much for him by far hes in the last wave. But I don't know.

Anyway where was it confirmed Wave 3 would be on December 1st? If it is... YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY SPLAT, ASTROBLAST AND EVERYTHING FOR CHRISTMAS MWWWHAHAHA!

Quote: SkylanderGoo

My TRU still has pegs full of the SSA adventure packs

I mean the Dark and Light expansions.

Isn't Ninjini a shelfwarmer? Or is that just locally?

I had no probs finding ninjini found one at Walmart so. Doom stone and the yawn traps I didn`t care about so. but wham shell took me 3 months of calling every local store every morning which was 6 stores target, super target, Walmart, gamestop, toys r us, and best buy

TRU has a good number of Ninjini, among other figures from SG and SF, with a smidgen of SA stuff left over.

You know, it's probably not even a big deal. My guess is that she is just going to get delayed to wave 3. I'm still fairly new to skylanders collecting, but doesn't that fall around the holiday season? If not in a wave, she'll probably just get released out of the blue like Enigma, so we won't have to worry too much about scalpers. Besides, these aren't amiibo, Activision does a pretty good job with stocking these things.

Quote: TJRedeemer

You know, it's probably not even a big deal. My guess is that she is just going to get delayed to wave 3. I'm still fairly new to skylanders collecting, but doesn't that fall around the holiday season? If not in a wave, she'll probably just get released out of the blue like Enigma, so we won't have to worry too much about scalpers. Besides, these aren't amiibo, Activision does a pretty good job with stocking these things.

I'm mostly inclined to agree, but I have never once seen any of the light & dark element toys for Trap Team....but that could be in part due to my living in a small town with only a couple stores that even carry Skylanders...

Nightfall won't be hard to find. If I had my guess it will ship in cases dedicated to just that figure since they have to scramble to make some more.

Quote: TJRedeemer

You know, it's probably not even a big deal. My guess is that she is just going to get delayed to wave 3. I'm still fairly new to skylanders collecting, but doesn't that fall around the holiday season? If not in a wave, she'll probably just get released out of the blue like Enigma, so we won't have to worry too much about scalpers. Besides, these aren't amiibo, Activision does a pretty good job with stocking these things.

The only curveball in recent history that contradicts any of this is last year's week before Christmas very limited release of the light and dark expansion packs...instant sell outs everywhere and very poor scattered restocks over the course of 1-2 months and then again a restock in April sandwiched between a period of unavailability and uncertainty. I fully believe somewhat aggressive hunting will be required if Nightfall is released in December. If you can wait for any December release until after the holidays, then it's so much easier to obtain.

Quote: TakeYourLemons

I'm really surprised too that someone didn't take 10 minutes and go through the factory figs with the final release and regression test. I guess you're right they're hitting different things. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for those conversations. I have to think several people may have lost jobs over this due to the cost alone to fix this.

There's a balance to strike here...not sure why Microsoft cares really if bad developers deliver bad code, but apparently it was bad enough in the past that it threatened their eco system. Not sure if it speaks to issues in their SDK or not. Everyone knows Directx version 12 will fix all of the FPS issues.

Yeah it seems like QA people would pull 1 fig for every 100 or so just to see. I'm not sure what the ratio of "bad chips" to "good chips" are but it just seems like this would have gotten caught. Never the less, I'm still amazed it took 5 years for this to happen. If anything this seems like something that would have occurred during SSA or SG.

Guys, it is not a "bad" or "defective" chip. It's a chip with the wrong ID number on it. The figures work just fine with games that have been patched to recognize that internal code as Nightfall. ALL of the ones that went out are like this.

Quote: defpally

Guys, it is not a "bad" or "defective" chip. It's a chip with the wrong ID number on it. The figures work just fine with games that have been patched to recognize that internal code as Nightfall. ALL of the ones that went out are like this.

Yep, I was talking about checking the rfid id on the production figs against the production software code. It would've been funny though if the chips were missing altogether.

ninja, I'm with you...surprised this hasn't happened by now. I'm a bit bummed it happened on VV's watch though.

Though I wonder - is it cheaper to replace the chips(tear that engine in two,yesss (/s)) or make new figures altogether? She's such a pretty figure, I hope the rush to restock doesn't kill her quality.

Quote: Bifrost

Though I wonder - is it cheaper to replace the chips(tear that engine in two,yesss (/s)) or make new figures altogether? She's such a pretty figure, I hope the rush to restock doesn't kill her quality.

You're probably right, might be cheaper just to collect and destroy the figs and start over. I'm guessing they have to salvage them though because of the costs of ramping up manufacturing and the fact they need months of time to do that.

Quote: Bifrost

Though I wonder - is it cheaper to replace the chips(tear that engine in two,yesss (/s)) or make new figures altogether? She's such a pretty figure, I hope the rush to restock doesn't kill her quality.

Ok, to replace the chip you would at a minimum need to:

- Unpackage them without damage
- Pry off the bottom without damage
- Replace the chip
- Reattached the base securely
- Repackage the figures

And all of this by hand, manually. And for labor to be cheap enough to do that, they would have to be shipped back to China, which costs even more.

Given the figures probably cost them a dollar to make, it is absolutely cheaper to destroy and re-order. They will be crushed and sent to the landfill. As far as quality, who knows. We didn't get enough of them to know whether the quality is high or low. It might go up, it might go down, it might be the same.

This isn't necessarily a coding problem/bug. It is not uncommon for China manufacturers to cut corners on things like this (or make a mistake) then ship anyways and pretend there isn't a problem. My Mom works in furniture importing, and she constantly has to tell me they have to watch the imported items like a hawk, corners get cut/defects to save money regularly and passed off. The in store portal might have just been coded to finished figure specs by mistake.

I agree defpally, so then they must be doing a rush order on these. I seem to recall a 6 month lead time on this. Then again, the factories are probably still in play now as we speak on other waves...just the cost of switching the manufacturing layout for the figure I guess.

Well, you can pry Nightfall off the base with a bit of heat because she's suspended, you'd just need to replace the hair and the packaging. Quite a shame, I could do sick customs with all the figures going to the trash(or bad ones, either way no one's making money off of them) e_e

That's why I think around Christmas we will see cases of nothing but Nightfalls. They won't disrupt other wave for this.

I believe one of the Xbox platforms can use Nightfall as well in addition to the PS4. Well, I will hopefully find out Saturday if Nightfall works on the PS3.

Its possible only the PS4 needed the patch (and not the PS3) but I doubt it.

Quote: lamoracke

I believe one of the Xbox platforms can use Nightfall as well in addition to the PS4. Well, I will hopefully find out Saturday if Nightfall works on the PS3.

Its possible only the PS4 needed the patch (and not the PS3) but I doubt it.

this for sure is interesting, i would love to hear how this workout... can you try with patch first then delete the patch and try again and see what happen?... keep us updated about this, its most important.